designcoding
About Table of Contents Keywords Monthly Archive
Support designcoding!

Custom Graphics on VPL

January 10, 2012 | Discourses
#attractor #grasshopper #laser-cutting #visualization

This was an interesting challenge for me to find out if an architect can use Visual Programming Languages (VPL’s) also for graphical purposes? Now, I would say “not exactly” because this definition took much time than I expected. The aim was to create an algorithm for a business card design that has variable outputs. Each card should be different, but without using any randomization. This project is suitable for more development because now it is only producing one sequence of difference. I’ll post first laser outputs when I make time to cut this set. Anyway, that was a good exercise on list management and the use of comparsion components such as “closest point on curve”. In theory a simple attractor of x-y shifted curves (text) on a bunch of circles should have solved that. But I couldn’t make a list of points to search for a closest point on another list of curves. Sounds easy but I couldn’t figure it out as the component insists on finding one solution for each point. So I changed tactics and got advantages of a more powerful component of “find closest point on a point cloud”, by dividing text curves into several points and search within them. This definition is powerful in putting any text into the selected layout properly (as far as I tested).

Custom Graphics on VPL attractor, grasshopper
Custom Graphics on VPL laser-cutting, visualization
Custom Graphics on VPL Grasshopper definition
Rhinoceros file (3DM)Download
Grasshopper definition (GHX)Download

Cite this post

Yazar, T. (2012, January 10). Custom Graphics on VPL. designcoding. Retrieved August 24, 2026, from https://www.designcoding.net/customizing-graphics/

Related Posts

Basic Grid Deformation

July 5, 2023

I am still trying to find the simplest solution to some geometric definitions. This is why I called this Grasshopper definition “Basic Grid Deformation”. Here you see the Curve Proximity (CrvProx) component in use. This component calculated the shortest distance between two curves. I think the underpinnings of this component are very interesting. I hope I can code it in Python one day. In order to see the result more clearly, the Previews of the Interpolate Curve (IntCrv) and Square…

Attractor Basics

June 29, 2023

In this short tutorial, I want to give Grasshopper beginners the basics of how we create attractor systems. The Grasshopper definition you see in the below figure is the equivalent of array-type copying operations in CAD. However, unlike in CAD programs, here we are dealing with multiple generations of objects rather than transformations. Attractor Basics: Data Matching In the application you see in the figure below, each row of the hexagonal grid created with HexGrid has a different radius value….

Point Waves

May 29, 2023

Here is another basic exercise in Grasshopper. This exercise “Point Waves” creates wave-like deformations on the grids of points. The major function of the definition is to calculate the distances from every point of a grid to an attractor point, with the help of Distance (Dist). Then it sorts them from the smallest to the largest (= closest to farthest) with the Sort List (Sort) component. This component takes and matches two lists of the same size, called key (K)…

ARCH362 Basics

March 17, 2015

Another tutorial we’ve analysed together with ARCH362 students last week was the one that mimics Zaha Hadid’s Kartal Masterplan. Although the project of Zaha Hadid was pretty much controversial among Turkey’s architectural critics (and most people also), we’re not dealing with how successful or “ugly” it is, but the most simple version of the technique that generated such forms. We have a term “çakma” in Turkish that means “conscious imitation, possibly full of errors”. But however, this “çakma Kartal Project” example has…

Fracture

September 2, 2013

Fracture is a simple effect experiment on Grasshopper. Although it is not the best tool for an interactive media installation regarding its performance, I tried to use it as a simple sketching tool for concept development. It is the sketch of a material system we are working on nowadays for an Exhibition. The initial diagram of Grasshopper includes a nested Voronoi subdivision broken by moving attractor points. It is not fast enough for a real-time interaction yet, because of the…

  • Chapters

    • Algorithms
    • Discourses
    • Fabrications
    • Studios
  • Explore

    • All Keywords
    • Table of Contents
    • Monthly Archive
    • #rhino-python
    • #polyhedra
    • #parametric-surface
    • #robot
    • #tessellation
    • #boolean
    • #kuka-prc
    • #dome
    • #design-object
    • #image-sampler
    • #terrain
    • #sandblasting
    • #stone
    • #parametric-curve
    • #animation
    • #cycloid
    • #art
    • #aperiodic
    • #tiling
    • #dodecahedron
  • Search

  • Support designcoding!

  • Enjoying designcoding? Support me on Patreon to keep it growing. Thank you!

  • copyright 2026 designcoding.net | about | privacy policy | end user license agreement